Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

book reviews

A Call for Book Reviews

photography of book page
Photo by Nitin Arya on Pexels.com

Summer is approaching and it is a great time to kick back with a good book. Over the years, ESN has included reviews of books broadly focusing on the intersection of Christian faith and academic life. If you are reading or have read something that fits that, we’d love to post your review to let other Emerging Scholars members know about the book.

Here’s what we suggest:

  • Citation (MLA Format): Author last name, First name. Book Title: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher, Year.
  • A concise discussion of the content, particularly plot (without spoilers, if fiction) or thesis and argument if non-fiction.
  • What you thought: strengths, points of agreement, where you would differ, what you liked, what would make it better (be kind, especially to living authors who may read this!).
  • Who is this for (audience)?
  • Submit your review in Word .docx form to bob.trube@intervarsity.org. Include a headshot and 2-3 sentence bio.

We like to work with an upper limit of 1500 words, so this would not be the kind of in-depth review you would submit to a journal. Generally, we say 800 to 1200 words is the sweet spot.

Give a review, get a book. We do not pay for reviews or articles, but as a thank you, we offer a free InterVarsity Press book worth up to $50 retail for all accepted articles. Let us know when you submit your article what book you would like as well as your full mailing address and phone number (required for IVP orders).

So let us know what you are reading this summer! If you have questions, just email Bob!

Musings: Atheist TV to summer reading

What are you looking for when you turn on the TV?

“. . . Why are we going to television?” he [David Silverman, president of American Atheists] asked the audience [at Stanford], a mix of about 100 students and people from the local community. “It’s part of our strategy of going where we are not. . . .” – Kimberly Winston. Atheist TV: Coming soon to a television near you (Religion News Service. 5/7/2014).

So began my morning reading. This led to a simple Emerging Scholars Network Facebook Wall post in which I commented:

I’m surprised that “atheists” don’t already have a TV channel of some form or that some channels might not be considered atheistic by default. But it’s great to have the American Atheists clearly defining their perspective via a TV channel. I confess not following “Christian TV” (or much TV in general).

Then I transitioned to several questions: [Read more…] about Musings: Atheist TV to summer reading

Following Jesus in the “Real World”

Wrestling with vocation and our call to follow Jesus in the “Real World”? Let’s have a conversation . . .

The contributors to Faithful is Successful, Notes to a Driven Pilgrim are very much interested in feedback from and interaction with Emerging Scholars. That’s why they’re sharing their material with a volunteer ESN writer team to review and respond to via an ESN blog series. As you may remember, Andy Walsh kicked off the series with In Response to “The Difficulty Discerning Calling”. Please join the on-going conversation. . . . ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Editor.

————

I’m having an unexpected emotional reaction to the chapters I’ve read so far from the book project, Faithful is Successful: Notes to the Driven Pilgrim. I emphasize emotional, because this isn’t a rational response. I can convince myself rationally that I shouldn’t feel this way. But I do, and I’m not completely sure why. When Tom Grosh asked me a while back to consider responding to draft chapters on the ESN blog, I thought it looked like a great idea. Vocation is something I believe in. Following God’s calling. Faithfulness. Supporting Christians in careers that lack a significant Christian presence. Dialog about all this on a site for Christian students and scholars sounded ideal.

But frankly, as I’m reading through the table of contents and initial chapters (I have read drafts of the first two chapters in full), I’m finding myself uncomfortable. The chapters are testimonies of successful men stepping out in faith, letting go of their own plans and allowing God to direct their steps. Bryan McGraw describes giving up youthful dreams of adventure to follow God into academia, and then leaving a tenure-track position to prioritize family and “Kingdom work.” He explains how his view of vocation changed as his position at a “small Midwestern Christian liberal arts college” made worldly success “wildly elusive.” Dano Jukanovich, who wrote the second chapter, was likewise a (self-described) “young, goal-oriented, relatively successful, type-A male,” a recipient of the Harvey Fellowship awarded to Christian graduate students at premier institutions in hopes that they make a difference in their field. He gave up a lucrative position in corporate finance to open a consulting firm in Rwanda aiming to “alleviate poverty, improve community, shape industry and inspire others.” Both are stories of God’s faithfulness as men who had made it in worldly terms re-evaluated their idea of vocation. These are the kind of men I’ve been raised to see as role models, and whose lives I’ve sought to emulate.

But that may be the problem. (Bear with me as I try to think through this. I may still change my mind.) These are exactly the kind of people that the American evangelical middle-class subculture—my subculture—designates as role models. This is what I wanted to be when I grew up. They are successful, well-educated, middle-class white men, married with children, respected in their careers. They made it! And beyond that, they trusted God enough to give up excellent positions to follow His calling on their lives. Appropriately, God has blessed them in new ways. They were chosen to contribute to this book for that very reason: the book project website explains that “We asked a group of ambitious, driven people—professors, scientists, artists, investment bankers and more—to give us their stories….”

I’m not trying to be cynical. Their stories are inspiring and challenging. But it stings a bit—reinforcing an ideal that I now know I’ll never achieve.  [Read more…] about Following Jesus in the “Real World”

Book Review: Homosexuality and the Christian

Homosexuality and the Christian
Homosexuality and the Christian by Mark A. Yarhouse (Bethany House)

We’re beginning an occasional series of short book reviews, written by guest writers, on topics relevant to Christians in the academy. The following review is by Tim, a professor at a small private college. Thank you, Tim! If you’d like to contribute a book review, please get in touch. ~ Mike

This year has seen homosexuality in the news more than usual. In March, Vanderbilt University began prohibiting student groups from requiring officers to sign a statement of beliefs, following a homosexual student’s complaint[1. For more on the situation at Vanderbilt from the InterVarsity staff there, visit InterVarsity at Vanderbilt. ~ Mike] In May, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden endorsed same-sex marriage. In June, Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, the largest Christian group focused on ministering to homosexuals, said he no longer considers it helpful to counsel homosexuals to try to “change” to become heterosexual. In June, comments about homosexuality made by Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-Fil-A, were made into front-page news, and stoked rallies of support and protest around the nation.

In view of this ongoing issue which is relevant to us Christian academics, I recently had the opportunity to read Homosexuality and the Christian: A Guide for Parents, Pastors, and Friends by Dr. Mark Yarhouse and also to hear him explain his research in person. I greatly appreciated his thoughts, and wanted to provide a short review of his book to encourage others to read it also. [Read more…] about Book Review: Homosexuality and the Christian

Bielo: Answering “Are you a Christian? Are you an academic?”

Words Upon the Word
Words Upon the Word

I’m currently reading Words Upon the Word by James S. Bielo, an ethnography of evangelical Bible study groups in Lansing, Michigan. Last week, I looked at Bielo’s introduction and the question of Bible study as a cultural institution. This week, I continue with Bielo’s first chapter, in which he describes his methods for selecting and observing the Bible study groups. In the progress of his research, two issues with significances to the Emerging Scholars Network arose. The first: the varieties of meaning behind the word “Christian.”

“Are you a Christian?”

If you have visited many evangelical churches, you’ve likely heard the question “Are you a Christian?” or some close variation. Depending on the context, it can be a tricky question to answer well. As Bielo writes, it’s especially tricky when you are an ethnographer visiting a Bible study in order to observe it for a research project.

How have anthropologists responded to this question? Frankly, the most common approach is silence, an avoidance of how this matter of identify impacted the research. It is a sort of don’t ask-don’t tell policy — one that is always conspicuous in its absence. For those that do address the issue, the dominant narrative is hardly surprising. It is somewhat of a truism, at least in the United States, that religious faith can be hard to come by in the academy — a fact appearing in exaggerated form among anthropologists….In responding to the question [in a Carnegie Foundation survey] “What is your religion?” anthropologists refused to claim any affiliation at a rate of 65 percent, ten points above the next discipline (philosophy) and more than twice the mean for all others. (Bielo, 30-31, emphasis added)

Bielo, however, doesn’t favor this approach. Instead, he prefers an approach influenced by Brian Howell’s suggestion that a Christian studying Christians is similar to “the feminist studying women, the leftist studying labor unions or the Muslim studying mosques” (32, quoting Howell’s “The Repugnant Cultural Other Speaks Back: Christian Identity as an Ethnographic ‘Standpoint.'”)

The question “Are you a Christian?,” though, means different things in different churches. InterVarsity staff or anyone who navigates between different varieties of Christianity know this, and I was impressed with Bielo’s discussion of “Six Iterations of ‘Are You a Christian?'” in this chapter. Of the six churches in Bielo’s study, three are United Methodist, and the remaining three are Lutheran-Missouri Synod (LCMS), Restoration Movement (Christian Church/Churches of Christ), and Vineyard. [Read more…] about Bielo: Answering “Are you a Christian? Are you an academic?”